What is a nestable pallet?

The leg-in-leg trick

Look at a nestable from the side. The legs are hollow and taper toward the floor, narrower at the bottom than at the deck. Set a second pallet on the first and its legs slip down inside the lower pallet's legs until the decks stop them. The gap left between the two decks is the nest increment: 2.50 in on one maker's standard-duty model, 2.55 in on its heavy-duty one.

Everything else follows from that gap. A 6.5 in pallet that nests at 2.55 in adds 2.55 in per extra pallet, so 20 nested stand 54.95 in tall, against 130 in un-nested. That is the picture on the home page of this site, and the ruler beside this text.

Where nestable is the right style

• Closed loops, where pallets come back to the same site empty and the return leg is paid for by the stack height.
• Plants with little floor space, where a stack of empties in the corner is the cost. One source puts the saving in empty storage space at up to 75 percent.
• Export lanes where the pallet is light on purpose and may not come back, and a short stack still cuts the cost of getting it there.

Where it is the wrong style

If the pallet lives on rack beams, a standard-duty nestable is usually the wrong choice, because it carries no racking rating on its sheet. If it carries a very heavy load for months, its static rating is not the whole story, because plastic can deform under long-term loads. And if it is stacked loaded very high, a stackable with a high static rating may be a better fit; see the stackable hub.

A nestable is also not automatically light. PHS lists 19 nestable models with static ratings from 2,204 to 15,000 lb, so "nestable" spans light export pallets to heavy-duty stackers. The word tells you how the empties behave, not how much the pallet carries.

Trailers for your volume

Suppose 4,400 empty pallets come back in a month. At the maker figures on file that is 4 trailers of Rehrig Pacific heavy-duty nestables (1,200 each), 2 of PHS Plastic's EXP 100 (2,340 each) or 9 of a rackable (540 each). The table runs the same sum for 6 volumes, from 4,400 to 23,120.

How tall the empties stand

Stack height is the other half of the return leg. For the Rehrig Pacific heavy-duty nestable, a stack of 4 stands 14.15 in and a stack of 22 stands 60.05 in, against 143.0 in un-nested.

Questions to put to the maker

• Is the pallets-per-trailer number for nested empties, or for loaded pallets?
• What happens to the rating if a stack is stored outside in the sun?
• Does a nested stack need a strap or wrap to ship, and who supplies it?
• Is the nest increment measured on a new pallet, or one that has been in service?
• Is there a version of the model with a lower nest increment, and what does it give up?
• Can nested stacks be handled by a pallet jack, or do they need a clamp or forks?
• How many empties can stand in one nested stack before the stack leans?
• Which exact model is the figure for, and does the sheet give the nest increment or only the pallets per stack?

From the dock

• A trailer loaded to the roof is limited by cube, not weight, which is why empties are priced by the trailer.
• Count empties by stack height against a mark on the wall, not pallet by pallet, and the tally takes seconds.
• Nesting pays only when pallets come back. A one-way shipment gains nothing from a deep nest except cheaper freight out.
• Warehouses with low ceilings find nested stacks fit under sprinkler lines that tall un-nested stacks would hit.
• Return legs are often the cheapest freight a carrier hauls, which is why closed loops lean on the nest figure.
• Mixing two models in one nested stack can fail: legs that differ by a fraction of an inch will wedge rather than seat.
• A pallet that nests well but cracks at the corner after a season is not a bargain; ask for the service record.

Words on this page

Racking load

The weight a pallet holds when it rests on two rack beams with an open gap between them. It is usually the lowest rating and only exists for pallets built for racks.

UL

Underwriters Laboratories, a safety testing body that publishes fire test standards, including one for storage pallets.

Recycled content

The share of a pallet moulded from reground plastic. Makers print it as a range, often by colour.

Nest ratio

How many empty pallets fit in the height of one: pallet height divided by nest increment.

Stretch wrap

Elastic film wound around a loaded pallet to hold the load together.

Footprint

The length and width of a pallet deck. It is chosen to fit the container, the drum, the bag or the receiving rack.

HDPE

High-density polyethylene, a tough resin used in many plastic pallets, valued for strength against its weight.

GMA pallet

The 48 by 40 inch North American standard, named for the Grocery Manufacturers Association that popularised it.